- Elizabeth C. Adams
- Greenleaf E. Price
Charles went to Boston and
returned to dine. Miss Susan
Quincy was here yesterday, and took the Manuscript Volume
which had belonged to Josiah Flint
of Dorchester and his son Henry
Flint, for half a century a Tutor at Harvard College, and
which she had sent me— I answered an invitation of a Committee of the
Citizens of Springfield, to a public dinner to be given there on the
3d. of this month upon the occasion of
the opening of the railroad from Boston to that place, through
Worcester; and the project of which imports a continuance of it to the
Hudson river— I declined this invitation. But that which now absorbs
great part of my time, and all my good feelings is the case of 53
African Negroes taken, at sea, off Montauk point, by Lieutt.
Gedney in a Vessel of the United States employed upon the
survey of the Coast; and brought into the Port of New-London— These
Negroes were a fresh importation of Slaves from Africa into the Havana,
against the Laws of Spain; and her Treaties with Great-Britain—purchased
there under the nose of the joint Commission of Britain and Spain
sitting there for the suppression of the Slave-trade— Shipped from the
Havana, for another port on the Island, by two Spanish Subjects,
Ruiz and Montes, the purchasers of the Slaves—
When four days out, the Negroes revolted; killed the Captain and Cook of the ship; took possession of the ship; spared the
lives of Ruiz and Montes, and ordered the latter, skilful in Navigation
of, which they were ignorant, to steer for Sierra Leone. He deceived
them by changing the course of the ship every night from that which they
understood enough of navigation to make it necessary for him to steer by
day— By this double process, they had as it were finally drifted upon
our coast and being finally boarded by Lieutt. Gedney, he at the request of the two white men took
possession of the vessel, without resistance from the negroes, and
brought her into New London. 49 of the Negroes were claimed by Ruiz as
his property. 4 Children—3 girls and a boy, by Montes as his property—
But they charged the Negro men, with murder and Piracy, for killing the
Captain and cook and taking the ship; and yet claimed all the Negroes as
their property; and Lieutenant Gedney libelled the ship and Cargo,
including the Negroes for Salvage— The Spanish Minister too, at Washington, has laid claim to
the whole ship, Cargo and Negroes, to be restored to the owners, by
virtue of the 9th. Article of the Treaty
with Spain of 27. October 1795—the District judge Judson received the charge of Piracy, and committed
the 49 negro men to be tried at the Circuit Court at Hartford on the
17th. of September, and the four
children to appear as witnesses—and at the same time he admitted the
claim of the Spaniards to the Negroes as their property, and the Libel
of Captain Gedney When the Circuit Court met, on the 17th.
Judge Thomson, upon a statement
of the facts by the grand-jury charged them that the Court had no
jurisdiction of any crime committed on the high seas, in a Spanish
vessel—but he refused to liberate the Negroes upon Habeas Corpus;
because they were claimed by the Spaniards as property, and he held that
the District Court had jurisdiction upon this claim— More upon this
subject to-morrow— I went up to Charles’s house at Sunset, and found
Mr and Mrs Sidney
Brooks there to take tea— Charles and his wife and E. Price Greenleaf spent the
Evening here.